During the YouTube’s appearance at VidCon, the three new ways for creators
to
earn more income on the platform
were announced. Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief product officer wrote on the YT
creator’s blog: “YouTube is a vibrant community where everyone has a voice.
Every day, creators use their voice to entertain, spur action and bring
about positive change. That’s why over the last year we’ve doubled down on
building the products and tools that the creator community needs.”

Besides new monetization options coming for the platform creators, YouTube
is also running some video experiments, introducing new video analytics and
improving the platform in other ways. Let’s look over all the changes that
were announced over the last couple of weeks.

More Accurate Like and Dislike Counts

YouTube has improved its validation system, making it ensure that likes and
dislikes are not coming from specialized programs and bots.

The update was
announced
by YT Lukas, the platform’s representative from YouTube Help Forum:
“Starting today, we’re making a system update to catch even more spam in
likes and dislikes across YouTube. The main reason a like would be marked
as spam is when it’s purchased from a third-party service. Paying for likes
or dislikes is a direct violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.”

The system will also check likes and dislikes that have been given to video
prior to the day of the update announcement.

Channel Memberships

YouTube is expanding previously existing Sponsporship feature and calling
it Channel Membership. The Memberships is featuring channels that are part
of the YouTube Partner Program and have over 100,000 subscribers.

The option is now available to a select group of
creators
, allowing subscribers to pay a monthly fee of $4.99. Paying subscribers
have access to the special account badges, emojis, members-only posts in
the Community tab and exclusive content from creators (livestreams, extra
videos, shout-outs).

Merchandising Options for Creators

YouTube has partnered with Teespring to offer creators a merchandising
platform with more than 20 customizable items available. The merch items
can be sold to subscribers directly via channel. The platform
representatives also inform that the number of merchandising partners is
going to expand, and the merch creating ability will be available to more
YouTube creators. Teespring reports the case of one creator earning over
$1M in profit over an 18-day period selling a “furry friends” item.

Premieres Video Format

YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan said the following on the new
format: “With Premieres, creators will be able to debut pre-recorded videos
as a live moment. When creators choose to release a Premiere, we’ll
automatically create a public landing page to build anticipation and hype
up new content.”

The landing page will also have a chat feature which will allow creators to
use Super Chat and take advantage of the Membership features and generate
revenue without doing livestreams.